Romney McCain's VP? Recounting The Hate Fest

News reports surfaced from Time Magazine late Thursday night that John McCain had settled on a running mate: Mitt Romney.

If this is true -- and in the VP speculation game, egg is occasionally found on one's face -- it would be a remarkable (although not historically unprecedented) political and personal reconciliation.

Just one year ago, McCain and Romney were engaged in probably the most petty and scurrilous rivalry of the whole election. One aide closed to the Arizona Republican's campaign once told me that, among the ranks, "everyone I talked to hated [Romney]. I have not met a single person associated with the campaign who doesn't." Officials with Romney's primary campaign frequently, though off the record, expressed similar sentiments for their competitor.

Indeed, the attacks volleyed between the two GOP figures makes the current general election battle seem like an a exercise in political civility.

McCain's favorite charge against Romney, one that filtered its way into almost every ad, speech and debate line, was that the former Massachusetts governor was a political chameleon -- untrustworthy to the core and an opportunist at heart.

In late January 2008, when the race was still intense, the Arizona Republican commissioned an absolutely brutal robocall with the following script: "Unfortunately, on issue after issue, Mitt Romney has treated special issues voters as fools, thinking they won't catch on... Sorry Mitt, we know you aren't trust-worthy on the most important issues and you aren't a conservative."

Earlier that month, at a debate in New Hampshire, McCain himself delivered a memorable hit. At a time when even the GOP candidates were hoping to grab a little bit of Barack Obama's "change" mantle, the Arizona Republican resisted, dug in, and took a whack.

The press, sequestered in a nearby gymnasium, howled in shock and journalistic delight.

A week before that highlight moment, McCain was even more blunt. In a TV ad released on December 28, the Senator borrowed a clip from a Concord Monitor editorial stating: "If a candidate is a phony ... we'll know it. Mitt Romney is such a candidate."

The spot stung. In an ensuing report on ABC News Romney responded by saying: "It's an attack ad. It attacks me personally. It's nasty. It's mean-spirited. Frankly, it tells you more about Sen. McCain than it does about me that he would run an ad like that."

But such complaints fell on deaf ears. It seemed that McCain took a perverse pleasure out of digging his GOP rival. "Try to relax, Mitt," was his response.

Tndeed, it went on. Among the other criticisms McCain leveled included accusing Romney of a "wholesale deception of voters," being a "serial flip-flopper" that "voters can't trust" and continually taking "at least two sides of every issue, sometimes more than two." Romney's work as head of Bain Capital, a leveraged-buyout firm, became fodder. "As head of his investment company, he presided over the acquisition of companies that laid off thousands of workers." And towards the conclusion of the primary, McCain even accused Romney of changing his position "on being a Republican."

To be fair, Romney was not always the victim. Blessed with an abundance of self-provided resources, the former governor launched a series of attacks on McCain's character and politics.

He compared, negatively, McCain's campaign to Bob Dole's failed candidacy -- "The guy who is next in line and the inevitable choice and it won't work" -- a political attack twofer that didn't go over well among some in the GOP.

Not content to disparage one former conservative, Romney also accused the Arizona Republican of deliberately misrepresenting his position on Iraq in a style "reminiscent of the Nixon era."

Indeed, the vision Romney held of McCain was that of closet Democrat and shrewd political opportunist. He playfully ridiculed the Senator for "thinking about being John Kerry's running mate, in 2004. "Had someone asked me that question, there would not have been a nanosecond of thought about it. It would have been an immediate laugh," he said, before adding: "So we are different. I'm a conservative."

On immigration, the hot button issue last year (how times have changed), Romney leveled his harshest charges. In one TV ad, an announcer declared: "McCain championed a bill to let every illegal immigrant stay in America permanently... He even voted to allow illegal immigrants to collect Social Security... On illegal immigration, there's a big difference."

McCain, as is his custom, had a brutal response to the charge. "Maybe I should wait a couple weeks and see if it changes," he said of Romney's own position on the issue. "Maybe his solution will be to get out his small-varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his lawn."

But Romney was not deterred. In late January he detailed, in a Fox News interview, all the policies on which his rival could not be trusted.

"Senator McCain was against the Bush tax cuts and now says he's for the Bush tax cuts. He was against ethanol, then for ethanol, then against ethanol," said Romney. "I think Senator McCain is willing to say anything to try and get elected. He's been looking for this job for a long, long time."

And as things grew even testier, and the nomination remained up for grabs, Romney went after McCain's leadership, pinning the "failures" of Washington "in the last 25 years" to the Senator's tenure there. On the economy, in particular, Romney argued, "[McCain] doesn't understand how it works." And then, the former Massachusetts governor showed what could be, a remarkable amount of political prescience.

"Right now, [the economy] the biggest issue that voters here in Florida are concerned about," he said during an appearance on CNN. "And [voters] want somebody who does understand the economy. And having him time and again say, I don't understand how the economy works, I have got to get a V.P. that will show me how it works, that's a real problem for him."